Career Progression

It was the natural beauty of New Zealand and a love for the outdoors that brought Jerson Valencia​ to New Zealand from the Philippines – and to his career in nursing at Middlemore Hospital.

Jerson started here in 2017 as a Clinical Specialty Nurse for Plastic Surgery in our Operating Theatres.

He is now a Nurse Consultant for Patient Safety - Least Restrictive Practice, and also undertaking research on Filipino Internationally Qualified Nurses (IQNs) and their career progression.

“Working here opened the doors with countless opportunities for IQNs like me, namely doing post-graduate studies and working with the Plastic and Quality teams from different divisions here at Counties Manukau,” says Jerson.

“I also enjoy the warm, supportive, collaborative relationship with colleagues.”

Jerson is currently working towards his Masters in Nursing and his research is designed to understand the experience of Filipino IQNs on career progression in a tertiary acute hospital in New Zealand.

He explains that 31% of the New Zealand nursing workforce are IQNs and of that 38% of those are Filipino IQNs.

“Employing IQNs is a trend that’s been growing over the years. I wanted to find out what we can do further to support Filipino IQNs on their career journey.

“The objective is to navigate the enablers and barriers experienced by Filipino IQNs in career progression and find out if other Filipino IQNs had the same experience on career progression as I did.

“These reasons inspired me to explore this domain and learn about Filipino career progression experiences.

“As a researcher, I acknowledge and support the Government's goal of building Maaori and Pacific nurses, and it’s not my aim to take away from that, just to understand how we retain, support and promote well-being for IQNs effectively.”